A Saudi Arabian cleric has called for female babies to wear the full-body burka
in order to prevent sexual molestation.

In an interview on Saudi Arabia’s
Al-Majd station, Sheikh Abdullah Daoud explained that sexual molestation of
babies was common in the country and cited unnamed medical and security sources,
according to a report on the Al-Arabiya website.

The interview was
originally posted on the Internet in April 2012, but recently started to get
attention on social networks in the kingdom, where some have been criticizing
the ruling. Al- Arabiya reported that another distinguished cleric, Sheikh
Muhammad al-Jzlana, complained that it made Islam look bad, and that people
should ignore unauthorized fatwas and only follow those sanctioned by Saudi
authorities.

In a video clip of the interview, which was posted on the
MEMRI website, Daoud says that the custom of wearing a hijab (head covering) has
precedents in eastern Asia, where girls start wearing the hijab at the age of
two.

He goes on to say, “We want this too. We do not want to see
revealing and shameful clothing, especially when girls start to develop and fill
out, and show signs of beauty, and so on. You find that she is in a state of
exposure and nudity. I think we know that there are fatwas that forbid this,
even if they have not yet reached the stage of puberty. Whenever the girl is an
object of desire, the parents have the duty to cover her up with a
hijab.”

One of the scriptural roots of covering women comes from Koran
24:31, which states: “And tell the believing women to reduce [some] of their
vision and guard their private parts and not expose their adornment, except that
which [necessarily] appears thereof, and to wrap [a portion of] their headcovers
over their chests and not expose their adornment.”